Family Of Man Who Died From Legionnaires' Disease At Pittsburgh VA Hospital Speaks Out, Announces Intention To File Suit

PITTSBURGH, Dec. 10, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- A family from Hampton Township, a Pittsburgh suburb, announced today that they intend to file a claim against the United States Department of Veterans Affairs as a result of a death from Legionnaires' disease. William E. Nicklas, 87, died from Legionnaires' disease on November 23, 2012 at the VA Hospital on University Drive, which is operated by the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System. A total of five patients had contracted the disease at the hospital in November, with Mr. Nicklas being the only fatality.

Harry S. Cohen, attorney for the family, said he served the United States Government Monday with a "Form 95," which is the federal government's prerequisite notice form to present a claim against the VA under the Federal Tort Claims Act. According to Mr. Cohen, the federal government will have six months to investigate and respond and/or settle the claim before his firm is permitted by law to initiate a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

"The family of Mr. Nicklas, including his widow, children and grandchildren, are devastated by his death," said Mr. Cohen. "Based on information we've obtained, this death was very preventable. It appears as though the VA Hospital failed to properly maintain its water systems, despite recurring illnesses at the hospital and despite warnings from experts."

"My father was very proud to be a veteran, and proud of his service to our country," said David Nicklas, one of Mr. Nicklas' three sons. "He had Medicare and supplemental insurance, so he could have chosen any hospital. But as a veteran he trusted the VA to care for him. The VA betrayed that trust, just like they have for other veterans who were sickened. We want to do everything we can to make sure no other veterans suffer like my father did and like we are now," said Mr. Nicklas.

William Nicklas had been in very good health until first being admitted to the VA Hospital on University Drive in early October for shortness of breath. He was admitted for two days and discharged with instructions to follow up with his doctor. In the weeks that followed, Mr. Nicklas visited with his doctor and a beta blocker was prescribed. After a few days of taking the medication he became nauseated and dehydrated; and on November 1, he returned to the VA Hospital where he was admitted and treated for dehydration. He was recovering, but on November 17 problems developed with his kidneys, liver and blood.

The family was informed on the same day that Mr. Nicklas had developed an infection, and on November 21 they were told that he had contracted Legionnaires' disease. Mr. Nicklas' physical and mental condition deteriorated rapidly, until his death two days later. Legionnaires' disease is a type of pneumonia caused by breathing in water tainted by Legionella bacteria.

"We were repeatedly told at the VA that they expected my dad to make a full recovery, until the time that they confirmed that he had contracted the Legionnaires' disease," said Robert Nicklas. "He should have been home with us now, celebrating his birthday and then Christmas with my mom, his children, and grandchildren."

"My father's death was totally unexpected and tragic," said Ken Nicklas. "I spoke to him days prior to his death and told him I would be coming home to see him over the Thanksgiving holiday. Once we were advised of him contracting the Legionella bacteria on November 21st, I changed my travel plans to come home a day earlier than expected, but once I arrived at the airport my brothers advised me of his death about two hours earlier. I never got a chance to see him and that's devastating to me."

Mr. Nicklas was a veteran of World War II, entering the Navy in 1944, and serving in the Pacific theater. He was a tail gunner in a Navy fighter plane, attached to an Air Sea Rescue Force, and served at Guam, Saipan, Okinawa and other Pacific islands through his tour of duty. In May of 1946, he was honorably discharged and returned to Pittsburgh, starting his own auto body shop in Glenshaw where he worked for many years.

He married his wife Greta in 1953, and they had three sons. All three sons are married, and two live locally. Mr. Nicklas' son David, because of inspiration from his father, also enlisted in the United States Navy, serving eight years before being honorably discharged.

Mr. Nicklas worked with his son David, Hampton Township officials and other veterans groups to erect a memorial to those who died in military service, which stands in front of his hometown community center in Hampton Township.

U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) is one of several officials who have expressed outrage over the continuing occurrences of Legionnaires' disease at the Pittsburgh VA Hospital. On December 6, in a letter to VA Secretary Eric K. Shinseki that was made public by Sen. Casey's office, Sen. Casey said, "The fact that there has been at least one confirmed death connected to this recent outbreak and the continued investigation of further illness is both tragic and deeply disturbing. These men and women have made extraordinary sacrifices for our nation, yet we have failed in our duty to provide them with the quality of care that they have earned and deserve."

SYS-CON Events announced today that Keisoku Research Consultant Co. will exhibit at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Pavilion at SYS-CON's 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Keisoku Research Consultant, Co. offers research and consulting in a wide range of civil engineering-related fields from information construction to preservation of cultural properties. For more information, vi...

SYS-CON Events announced today that Interface Corporation will exhibit at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Pavilion at SYS-CON's 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Interface Corporation is a company developing, manufacturing and marketing high quality and wide variety of industrial computers and interface modules such as PCIs and PCI express. For more information, visit http://www.i...

SYS-CON Events announced today that MIRAI Inc. will exhibit at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Pavilion at SYS-CON's 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
MIRAI Inc. are IT consultants from the public sector whose mission is to solve social issues by technology and innovation and to create a meaningful future for people.

SYS-CON Events announced today that Fusic will exhibit at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Pavilion at SYS-CON's 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Fusic Co. provides mocks as virtual IoT devices. You can customize mocks, and get any amount of data at any time in your test. For more information, visit https://fusic.co.jp/english/.

As businesses evolve, they need technology that is simple to help them succeed today and flexible enough to help them build for tomorrow. Chrome is fit for the workplace of the future — providing a secure, consistent user experience across a range of devices that can be used anywhere.
In her session at 21st Cloud Expo, Vidya Nagarajan, a Senior Product Manager at Google, will take a look at various options as to how ChromeOS can be leveraged to interact with people on the devices, and formats ...

Smart cities have the potential to change our lives at so many levels for citizens: less pollution, reduced parking obstacles, better health, education and more energy savings. Real-time data streaming and the Internet of Things (IoT) possess the power to turn this vision into a reality. However, most organizations today are building their data infrastructure to focus solely on addressing immediate business needs vs. a platform capable of quickly adapting emerging technologies to address future ...

SYS-CON Events announced today that Taica will exhibit at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Pavilion at SYS-CON's 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Taica manufacturers Alpha-GEL brand silicone components and materials, which maintain outstanding performance over a wide temperature range -40C to +200C. For more information, visit http://www.taica.co.jp/english/.

In his session at @ThingsExpo, Greg Gorman is the Director, IoT Developer Ecosystem, Watson IoT, will provide a short tutorial on Node-RED, a Node.js-based programming tool for wiring together hardware devices, APIs and online services in new and interesting ways. It provides a browser-based editor that makes it easy to wire together flows using a wide range of nodes in the palette that can be deployed to its runtime in a single-click.
There is a large library of contributed nodes that help so...

SYS-CON Events announced today that Daiya Industry will exhibit at the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Pavilion at SYS-CON's 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Daiya Industry specializes in orthotic support systems and assistive devices with pneumatic artificial muscles in order to contribute to an extended healthy life expectancy.
For more information, please visit https://www.daiyak...

Many companies start their journey to the cloud in the DevOps environment, where software engineers want self-service access to the custom tools and frameworks they need. Machine learning technology can help IT departments keep up with these demands.
In his session at 21st Cloud Expo, Ajay Gulati, Co-Founder, CTO and Board Member at ZeroStack, will discuss the use of machine learning for automating provisioning of DevOps resources, taking the burden off IT teams.

What is the best strategy for selecting the right offshore company for your business?
In his session at 21st Cloud Expo, Alan Winters, U.S. Head of Business Development at MobiDev, will discuss the things to look for - positive and negative - in evaluating your options. He will also discuss how to maximize productivity with your offshore developers.
Before you start your search, clearly understand your business needs and how that impacts software choices.

SYS-CON Events announced today that Cedexis will exhibit at SYS-CON's 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Cedexis is the leader in data-driven enterprise global traffic management. Whether optimizing traffic through datacenters, clouds, CDNs, or any combination, Cedexis solutions drive quality and cost-effectiveness.

Most of the time there is a lot of work involved to move to the cloud, and most of that isn't really related to AWS or Azure or Google Cloud. Before we talk about public cloud vendors and DevOps tools, there are usually several technical and non-technical challenges that are connected to it and that every company needs to solve to move to the cloud.
In his session at 21st Cloud Expo, Stefano Bellasio, CEO and founder of Cloud Academy Inc., will discuss what the tools, disciplines, and cultural...

Is advanced scheduling in Kubernetes achievable?
Yes, however, how do you properly accommodate every real-life scenario that a Kubernetes user might encounter?
How do you leverage advanced scheduling techniques to shape and describe each scenario in easy-to-use rules and configurations?
In his session at @DevOpsSummit at 21st Cloud Expo, Oleg Chunikhin, CTO at Kublr, will answer these questions and demonstrate techniques for implementing advanced scheduling. For example, using spot instances ...

Many companies start their journey to the cloud in the DevOps environment, where software engineers want self-service access to the custom tools and frameworks they need. Machine learning technology can help IT departments keep up with these demands.
In his session at 21st Cloud Expo, Ajay Gulati, Co-Founder, CTO and Board Member at ZeroStack, will discuss the use of machine learning for automat...

DevSecOps – a trend around transformation in process, people and technology – is about breaking down silos and waste along the software development lifecycle and using agile methodologies, automation and insights to help get apps to market faster. This leads to higher quality apps, greater trust in organizations, less organizational friction, and ultimately a five-star customer experience.
These...

Containers are the future of web development, in large part thanks to Docker’s explosive growth. According to DataDog, 15 percent of hosts run Docker, which is significantly up from the 6 percent of hosts running it at this point in 2015. LinkedIn has also seen a 160 percent increase in profile references to Docker in just the past year alone, indicating Docker has become a much bigger priority fo...

Is advanced scheduling in Kubernetes achievable?
Yes, however, how do you properly accommodate every real-life scenario that a Kubernetes user might encounter?
How do you leverage advanced scheduling techniques to shape and describe each scenario in easy-to-use rules and configurations?
In his session at @DevOpsSummit at 21st Cloud Expo, Oleg Chunikhin, CTO at Kublr, will answer these questions...

Okay, so my vacations don’t necessary seem like other folks’ vacations. Yes, we relax. Yes, we spend too much money. Yes, we eat too much food. But for some reason, unusual learning opportunities pop up during our vacations, and this year’s vacation was no different. This year’s vacation theme was… logistics.
Our logistics foray started by watching the artsy-fartsy movie “The Lunchbox.” I hate ar...

The nature of the technology business is forward-thinking. It focuses on the future and what’s coming next. Innovations and creativity in our world of software development strive to improve the status quo and increase customer satisfaction through speed and increased connectivity.
Yet, while it's exciting to see enterprises embrace new ways of thinking and advance their processes with cutting edg...

With the modern notion of digital transformation, enterprises are chipping away at the fundamental organizational and operational structures that have been with us since the nineteenth century or earlier.
One remarkable casualty: the business process. Business processes have become so ingrained in how we envision large organizations operating and the roles people play within them that relegating ...

Blockchain. A day doesn’t seem to go by without seeing articles and discussions about the technology. According to PwC executive Seamus Cushley, approximately $1.4B has been invested in blockchain just last year. In Gartner’s recent hype cycle for emerging technologies, blockchain is approaching the peak. It is considered by Gartner as one of the ‘Key platform-enabling technologies to track.’ Whil...

Our cities have been connected since the dawn of urbanization in the Indus Valley and on the plains of Mesopotamia nearly ten millennia ago. Cities exist to gather and connect people, bringing us together into communities and joint ventures that need complex networks of communication. But in recent years the connected city has come to mean something more. Today and in the future, the connected cit...

These days, APIs have become an integral part of the digital transformation journey for all enterprises. Every digital innovation story is connected to APIs . But have you ever pondered over to know what are the source of these APIs? Let me explain - APIs sources can be varied, internal or external, solving different purposes, but mostly categorized into the following two categories. Data lakes is...

Every time there’s a notable cybersecurity breach, someone (even me) writes a comprehensive primer on the proper way to create “secure” passwords. Lather, rinse, repeat. Until a few years ago, everyone (including me) based their password advice on a 2003 paper from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), with the catchy title “NIST Special Publication 800-63.” The paper recommen...

Today most companies are adopting or evaluating container technology - Docker in particular - to speed up application deployment, drive down cost, ease management and make application delivery more flexible overall.
As with most new architectures, this dream takes significant work to become a reality. Even when you do get your application componentized enough and packaged properly, there are sti...

Automation is enabling enterprises to design, deploy, and manage more complex, hybrid cloud environments. Yet the people who manage these environments must be trained in and understanding these environments better than ever before. A new era of analytics and cognitive computing is adding intelligence, but also more complexity, to these cloud environments. How smart is your cloud? How smart should ...

“Self-driving cars are the future of ride-sharing,” proclaimed an industry expert who shall remain nameless. The comment struck me as ridiculous. From my point of view, Uber (and all car services) already provide self-driving cars. You don’t drive the car; the driver does. Do you really care whether the car is controlled by a human/machine partnership or it’s an autonomous mechanical device? Other...

21st International Cloud Expo, taking place October 31 - November 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading industry players in the world. Cloud computing is now being embraced by a majority of enterprises of all sizes. Yesterday's debate about public vs. private has transformed into the rea...

It takes years – sometimes a lifetime – to perfect certain skills in life: hitting a jump shot off the dribble, nailing that double high C on the trumpet, parallel parking a Ford Expedition. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book, “Outliers,” discussing the amount of work – 10,000 hours – required to perfect a skill (while the exactness of 10,000 hours has come under debate, it is still a useful point that...

Thanks to the plethora of communication and messaging apps available to the average user, unified communications (UC) is becoming more important than ever before. UC is a set of products and services designed to give employees a uniform communications experience, integrating different apps and channels to a singular point of interaction. For example, UC might allow a transcript of a voicemail to b...

‘Trend’ is a pretty common business term, but its definition tends to vary by industry. In performance monitoring, trend, or trend shift, is a key metric that is used to indicate change.
Change is inevitable. Today’s websites must frequently update and change to keep up with competition and attract new users, but such changes can have a negative impact on the user experience if not managed proper...

Agile has finally jumped the technology shark, expanding outside the software world. Enterprises are now increasingly adopting Agile practices across their organizations in order to successfully navigate the disruptive waters that threaten to drown them. In our quest for establishing change as a core competency in our organizations, this business-centric notion of Agile is an essential component o...

Cloud computing budgets worldwide are reaching into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and no organization can survive long without some sort of cloud migration strategy. Each month brings new announcements, use cases, and success stories.